In conjunction with making gaming more acceptable, I want to make it more accessible. Earlier today I set up my dad's Roku to be able to watch League of Legends and sat him down to watch a game. Almost immediately, he was lost. In retrospect, I think League (and other MOBAs) are the hardest to sit down and start watching. Just a warning, but this uses a lot of game particular terms and assumes that you have at the least a solid understand of League of Legends.
The largest problem competitive League has as an introduction to eSports is what draws in its biggest fans. The innumerable compositions and strategies available as well as the styles of play and tactical choices are fascinating to an experienced players and daunting to someone who has never before played. In addition, a lot of the information is not displayed to the viewer in an explicit manner. The various roles are not at all explained, nor are the builds and abilities of the various champions. While I can understand the icon of Doran's Shield and what it does, my father can't. Even people who have played the game, but have not watched a lot of high-level play will not know why the choice is significant. Further, as the game progresses, you can determine if a particular fight is going towards one team or another, but the outcome of the game as a whole is a lot harder to determine. Additionally, explaining the basics of the game is very tricky. You need to explain the laning phase, mid game, team fights, jungling, ganks, picks and bans, all of the roles and the variations thereof and more, before someone can even begin to follow.
Starcraft is a much simpler game to display. You collect resources to make an army to destroy the other guy. Resources are very easily indicated as are army units. Plus, most of the units use understandable attacks. Seeing bullets or acid spits going back and forth is understandable. However, when Sona uses her ultimate in League, it isn't easy to see how the yellow bars lead to the other team not moving- if you're aware enough to see the correlation. There isn't much CC in Starcraft, so all you need to do is track damage and damage is a lot easier to explain. Its a concept that people innately understand.
Even simpler is Counter-strike. At the basic level, you shoot they other guys, they die, you win. SC2 has a Sci-Fi layer that the viewer may have to dig through and League has its layer of Fantasy which similarly stands in the way of comprehension. The concept of Counter-Strike is very understandable. The details of the game and the perspective switching might be confusing at first, but shortly thereafter, it should be pretty simple to follow.
As games have tutorials, it might be necessary for there to be tutorials for eSports. It sounds silly as a concept, but a slower paced game, possibly even fully scripted to include a wide variety of ganks and team fights in each of the areas could be a hufe benefit to new viewers. An option to read over or view explanations of various strategies- poke comps, split pushing, aoe burst, assassin comps etc... as well as the roles could go a long way. Having a professional caster, along with high level examples of the associated plays and tactics would be very useful for non-players or first-time viewers.
In retrospect, it is possible for someone even as bad as me to write up the strategies and explanations of roles in the simplest terms possible. The trick of it is to use English, rather than the language associated with League. If I explain why an AP carry wants to focus an AD carry and talk about burst, sustained damage and the various types of CC, I'll be met with blank looks. If I say that the AD carry spends time early game to be able to deal massive, consistent damage later, and the AP carry wants to attack them so that they die or have to flee, thus removing themselves from the fight, it is a lot easier for my audience to understand.
This is, unsurprisingly, in accordance with my earlier post on language and consistency.
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